


Golden Hour

by racketghost



Series: Strange Moons [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 00:18:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20573327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racketghost/pseuds/racketghost
Summary: “It is occurring to me that there is a lot we don’t know about each other still,” he begins, his words carefully chosen. “We should probably make it a point to learn more.”





	Golden Hour

And this is the room

One afternoon I knew I could love you

—_King of Carrot Flowers_, Neutral Milk Hotel

The Spanish coast, April 1916

_“_We are _lost_.”

“We are _not_.”

“Yes, yes we are.”

“You can’t get lost on a coastline, angel. You just turn back the way you came. They’re a one-way street, coastlines.”

Aziraphale squints up at the blinding sky and then over to Crowley and has to remind himself that maybe there are worse things than being lost on a beach.

“We haven’t even been walking that long,” Crowley says, more to his point, “Just trust me this is worth it.”

They have been walking for what feels like to Aziraphale an awfully long while. A belly full of Spanish pastries stuffed with cheese and an entire bottle of wine did _not_ make for good walking companions.

“There it is, behind these rocks.”

Crowley turns back to glance at him, his hair like melted copper, and Aziraphale can see a flash of white fangs as the demon smiles at him, beguiling. _You are about as resolute as sea-foam when it comes to him, _he thinks, squinting up at him.

“Crowley, that is a cliff.”

“That is a pile of rocks, angel. A jetty. Come on.”

_Easy for him to say. A pile of rocks. He’s nothing but leg of course this isn’t a struggle for him._ Aziraphale blows an exasperated puff of air up at his hair and sets his eyes on the cliff, jetty, _whatever_.

Crowley is practically at the top already. Long limbs make quick work of the gaps between stones and it’s not like there is any weight there to carry, Aziraphale thinks, remembering Crowley’s lean arm under his fingers, skin like wet silk stretched over marble. He can feel his face flushing under more than just the heat of the sun. _I wonder how that arm is doing_.

He is slow, placing deliberate steps on easy stony footholds and wondering all the while if appearing instantly at the top of the small cliff would be considered a frivolous miracle.

_Shouldn’t perform miracles here anyway. Not around—_

“Oh!—“

His foot slips on a particularly slippery bit of seaweed covered rock, but before he even has the chance to fall a large hand grabs his own.

“I’ve got you,” Crowley says, as if the touch means nothing, as if the electrons between them aren’t bouncing like mad, “should’ve warned you about the seaweed.”

Crowley is strong. The strength in those fingers is shocking, pulling Aziraphale up to his feet as if the entire holy mass of him was little more than a handful of sand. If his grip lingers a bit longer than it should have Aziraphale isn’t going to mention it.

“See? Worth it.”

Aziraphale brushes ineffectively at the front of his jacket, composing himself, and then looks up and understands exactly what Crowley means.

“Oh, it’s _beautiful_,” he breathes.

The sun is a breathless halo in the blinding sky, in the cool lingering hours before sunset. The rocks have carved out a perfect semicircle of sand and water, tide pools and eddies, a deep cerulean lagoon full of tiny mysteries. The sunlight bounces off of polished stones and throws the cove into a dreamy golden light, iridescent and warm.

“How did you find this place?” He marvels, stepping down into the soft white sand. He bends close to the earth and sees the sand is made up of billions of tiny sea-shells, infinitesimally small, each a microscopic universe unto themselves.

“I needed a place to go. To be alone.”

Crowley is looking out at the junction of sky and sea, a perfect flat marriage of two diametrically opposed elements, something wistful coloring his face.

“Come walk with me,” Crowley says without asking. “I want you to see the tide-pools.”

Aziraphale backs up until he is butting up against a rock and sits, probably getting his pants wet. Crowley turns to pop a quizzical eyebrow at him.

“Shoes,” he says, by way of explaination, “I want to feel the ocean.”

Crowley looks as if he is considering the not-quite-summer warmth and even opens his mouth to surely complain, then closes it, and lifts one leg to pull off his shoe.

Barefoot at the edge of spring he can feel the promise of warmth under the cool sand, a future gift of summer. Out here he forgets that there is still a war tearing scars into most of Europe, battle-wounds to be healed, miracles to be performed. He watches Crowley watch the sun, drinking in the light like a plant that’s been under shade for too long, performing photosynthesis.

The hard angles of his face are thrown into sublime relief here— the strong edge of his jaw, the aquiline nose, the cut of a good cheekbone, hair incandescently bright— and Aziraphale can see for the first time how Crowley must’ve looked as an angel.

The sting of salt-cold water kisses his ankles and something in his chest twists, terrified; _how could you ever think of destroying this._

The tide fills each footstep with a murmur of saltwater, erasing their presence here. _If only we could disappear too_. The ocean licks up his ankles, onto his cuffed pants, traveling up the fabric.

Crowley squats beside a tide-pool, the tiny lagoon an entire contained universe: crabs and anemones, snails and fish, each of them living out entire lifetimes and whole generations in the microcosm. Crowley rests his hand on the water, swirls patterns into the surface.

“Hello, darlings,” Aziraphale says.

“They might as well be on a different planet,” Crowley murmurs, still stirring the water with his fingertips. “No one to disturb them here.”

Aziraphale is quiet for a long time, listening to the swell of tide coming in and the throw of water along the jetty, hearing Crowley’s steady breathing and his occasional complaint about sea-spray getting on his clothes. He closes his eyes and feels, for the first time in a very long time, like he is _exactly_ where he is meant to be.

How long they sit like that, tiny eternities between them, Aziraphale does not know. Time could have stopped for all he cares, here at the edge of the continent, at the edge of who they’re supposed to be.

* * *

The sun is hanging lower in the sky now, casting deep golden shadows onto the rocks, onto Crowley’s face. His hair has been cut short on the sides in the military style of the time, the shortest Aziraphale has ever seen it, and he can see the pale skin above his ear through his hairline, many shades paler than his face, a tiny scar etched there. _From whomever has shorn him, perhaps?_ He wonders. The glimpse fills him with a strange heat, like he’s seeing a different kind of tan-line, a lower one. He swallows, can feel blood rising to his face.

He can feel Crowley turn to look at him, knows he must look absurd trying to bury his face behind his arm and still look natural, as if this tide pool they’ve been sitting around for what is probably hours is the most interesting thing in the world.

“Are you ok, angel?”

The nickname has always felt good, felt _sweet_, if demons could even be such a thing. And Aziraphale never felt the need to tell him that it came across as being rather more affectionate than friendly.

“Oh! Er, yes. Just the sun in my eyes a bit,” Aziraphale wasn’t sure why he was blessed with this pale complexion and pale hair and certainly didn’t know why God chose to bless him with the ability to flood his face with an entire _body’s worth_ of blood at something as ridiculous as Crowley’s hairline. But here he is, doing his best to hide it.

Crowley is motionless next to him for a moment, and then a second later there is a hand dangling in front of his face.

Aziraphale lifts his head up out of his arms to see… Crowley’s _sunglasses_. Hanging there in silent offering.

“My back is to the sun,” he says in explanation, “if you want them,” he adds, and Aziraphale can see the haphazard way he holds them, hooked over one finger, trying desperately to look nonchalant, even as his hand is trembling minutely.

Aziraphale takes the glasses from him like they are some sort of holy relic, like they are moments away from busting into flames. They are heavy in his hands, heavier than he expects, and fit tightly around his temples.

The world is _dark_ under these, and he looks around in wonder, as if seeing the earth for the first time.

“So this is what the world looks like to you,” he murmurs, marveling at the ability to stare into the sun’s glare. Aziraphale can see how easily it would be to question the world around you behind these; the sun is a tiny incandescent ball in the sky, much smaller than he remembers, the shadows dark and inviting. And he feels… safe, behind them. Protected. Anonymous.

He finds his way back to Crowley’s face, where the demon is smiling crookedly at him.

“How’s it feel to see through a demon’s eyes?” He asks, smile growing wider.

“It’s so _dark_. I don’t understand how you can wear these at night.”

“I can see in the dark,” he says, as if that tiny bit of knowledge was as unexceptional as the weather.

“You can _see in the dark?_”

“Yes,” Crowley says, tilting his head at him as if Aziraphale was the odd one for not knowing. “You didn’t know that?”

“_No_, of _course_ I didn’t know that. Why would I know that?”

Crowley laughs for a moment and then sobers up, “serpent, remember?”

_What other marvelous secrets is that body keeping from me?_ Aziraphale wonders, a little dizzy, and then, frenetic: _Am I running out of time to find out?_

Aziraphale swallows the lump in his throat, looks at Crowley lounging there by the tide-pool, a snake sunbathing. His eyes rove up the long legs, the thin hips, fabric stretched tight across pelvic bones, rawhide and lean. There was nothing excess about Crowley for all he was supposed to represent sin. _No gluttony here,_ Aziraphale thinks, gaze lingering on the broad set of shoulders, the long, lean throat.

“I’m sure your body also comes with a perplexing set of extras,” Crowley says, drawing sigils on the rock with his wet fingers.

Aziraphale shrugs a shoulder, can feel himself wiggling a bit under the query.

“You have more than one, uh, _set of extras_?” He asks. It is occurring to him that while occasionally his halo would come creeping out when he got very excited there is not much else about his body that hadn’t remained fretfully human.

Crowley looks at him, the golden yellow of his eyes like a full autumnal moon and blinks, very slowly.

Aziraphale sucks the front of his teeth and rolls his eyes, “They don’t count.”

Crowley tilts his head, “Really now?”

Aziraphale can feel himself flushing again under the scrutiny.

“Your eyes are…” There is a spectacular lump in his throat, his faculty on words slipping “magical,” he arrives on.

Crowley is staring at him, flummoxed, mouth a bit open, and then he blinks many times in rapid succession and Aziraphale knows he is doing it on purpose. The flash bastard almost _never_ blinks.

The angel sits up primly and purses his lips.

“What?” He asks, when Crowley remains steadfastly silent.

“I’m just… uh,” he licks his lips, “_Magical_?”

“Yes. Enchanting, otherworldly,” he wiggles his fingers as if to help explain.

There is a steady flush walking up Crowley’s body, starting somewhere under his shirt and spreading up his neck to his face. Aziraphale watches it, transfixed, aware that Crowley has no idea where he’s looking under these dark lenses.

“So they don’t count because… because you think they’re _magical_.”

“Right.”

“Well, I think that a lot of humanity would disagree with you on that. Humans don’t much like my eyes. Find them rather spooky, I think.” Crowley looks away then, out to the steady rising tide, something lonely in the set of his shoulders.

_What do they know_, Aziraphale wants to say, but doesn’t.

“Sometimes my halo pops out.”

Crowley glances at him sharply, “_What_?”

“It’s dreadful. Lights up the whole room. I once blinded a man at the London zoo when I saw the flamingos.” Aziraphale twists his hands in his lap.

Crowley is squirming on his rock, head thrown back, beside himself with mirth.

“It’s not funny, Crowley.”

“It’s _hysterical,_ angel.”

“It was awful. I couldn’t help it. They are _shockingly_ pink.”

Crowley is still smiling at him, and Aziraphale is flattened— _ruined_— by the tenderness he finds in the edges of his smile, in the crinkling of his eyes. And then he imagines an eternity without it— with no opposite half of himself, no darkness to balance his light, no one to push against, pull toward. 

And he is still _furious_ at Crowley for the suggestion, for the_ idea_ that Aziraphale would aid him in destroying himself, would give him the key to his own extinction, would even consider that the thought alone would be pardoned.

How many secrets are between them, Aziraphale wonders wildly, how many unknowns, unquantifiable differences? Six-thousand years and he could still find himself lost in Crowley’s depth, drowning in it, could still marvel at the wide divergences, the sculpted sameness. Like a mirror, or reflection, a perfect reversal.

“It is occurring to me that there is a lot we don’t know about each other still,” he begins, his words carefully chosen. “We should probably make it a point to learn more.” _Because who knows how much longer you’ll be around for me to find out. _“All the better to thwart you, you understand,” he finishes, venturing a smile.

Crowley is looking at him strangely, as if finally noticing something that has been there all along.

“Sure, angel,” he says slowly, deliberately, “of course. The better to thwart me.”

He can hear Crowley swallow, can see his throat working.

“Can’t promise that you’ll like what you find though.”

Aziraphale watches the shift in his eyes, the kind of movement that would’ve been hidden by his glasses and wonders what other tiny looks, tiny tells his eyes would’ve told him in the past were they always so exposed.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Aziraphale says, “my lot isn’t a judgmental bunch.”

The laugh that Crowley barks out is empty of humor.

“That’s rich, angel. But I am certain that your lot _invented_ judgement.” Aziraphale lifts his chin and pointedly ignores him.

“How is your arm feeling?” He asks.

Crowley pulls down his collar and lifts most of an angular shoulder out of the opening.

“Better. Still have a scar there,” he is eyeing down his shirt and Aziraphale’s mouth goes strangely dry.

“Can’t believe I can get _scars_ now… I don’t remember marks ever lasting on me before.”

“Well, these bodies are 6,000 years old,” Aziraphale reminds him gently, thinking of the tiny scar above his ear.

“Or maybe we’re just… going native,” Crowley says, “becoming a bit human.”

Aziraphale looks at his hands, the square fingers dusted with white-blonde hair, and can see the promise of freckles blooming on his skin from their afternoon in the sun. He blinks and remembers the difficulty he had in buttoning his trousers the other day—

“Oh, is that why…” Aziraphale stops mid sentence, suddenly flushing at his candidness. “Never mind.”

“Is that why what?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing.”

Crowley is looking at him expectantly, warm ochre eyes steadfastly brilliant, something unconditional living there. Aziraphale huffs.

“I just noticed that I’m getting a bit… soft, where I never was before,” He says, a hand coming up to his stomach, and then, “must be all the crepes.”

He feels naked as soon as the words leave his lips, like he has just given confession. He tries a smile but it doesn’t sit right on his face.

“Aziraphale, you’re an angel, you _should_ be soft,” Crowley doodles a pentagram on the stone with his finger, “soft suits you.”

Something warm and bright blooms in Aziraphale’s chest. A familiar sort of bubbling lightness. Ambrosial, ticklish. He looks around, rubs a hand over his heart, and sees that they’re alone. _Then why—_

Crowley is still drawing Satanic looking symbols on the flat stone he’s sprawled on, resolutely not looking up at Aziraphale. Because, it dawns on Aziraphale, he is absolutely _flushed_ pink.

Aziraphale blinks, looks down at the hand he is rubbing on his chest, then back to Crowley, to his bare foot that is tapping a nervous, frenetic beat in empty air.

“_Oh_,” Aziraphale breathes. _It’s coming from _you_._

Crowley is a lesson in opposites— an almanac of unquantifiable goodness and wayward guile. A being of humor anchored in sorrow. Like there was something lost that he was always desperately searching for in every conversation.

Aziraphale never really considered that demons could feel love.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale says, taking Crowley’s glasses off and looking at him through his own eyes again, “_thank you_.”

Crowley nods, something a bit shy, a bit unhinged in the set of his jaw, the hang of his shoulders. Aziraphale hands the glasses back to him, the sun halving itself on the horizon; one half of a golden-red egg perched on the edge and the sea casting it back, faithful.

Crowley looks up at him, still a bit pink around the ears, and smiles, his sunglasses dangling between them, forgotten.


End file.
